Revised The Odisha Community-REDD Project: A Brief Report on the Accomplishments Revised: 12 April 2013 Compiled by: ©Regional Centre for Development Cooperation A/68, 1st Floor, Sahid Nagar, Bhubaneswar-751007 Ph. +91 674 2545250, Fax: +91 674 2545252 E-mail: [email protected] , [email protected] Website: www.rcdcindia.org, www.banajata.org The Odisha Community-REDD Project: A Brief Report on the Accomplishments Introduction: Regional Centre for Development Cooperation (RCDC) evolved as a civil society organization primarily with an objective of consolidating community stake in forest governance. Since its inception in 1993 it has seen many dynamics on the CFM (community forest management) front, and has pioneered initiatives that have been necessary for strengthening CFM activities with the need of changing times. The Odisha community- REDD project was one of the latest in such initiative, but it was a bit different in the sense that RCDC took up this project on a pilot basis for experimental purpose so as to see how far REDD+ appears to be feasible under the local circumstances and also to what extent it can actually help the CFM. The pilot project was more of a kind of learning-cum- preparatory activity rather than an actual implementation (because RCDC could not have taken the chance of implementing any action plan, in this case REDD+. that has been apprehended for causing possible impairment to the community stake), and after it was over the learning as well as the impact of the project on local CFM dynamics was found to be remarkable. The red REDD: Reducing Emission from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) was supposed to be one of the key strategies for combating climate change. Stopping deforestation was the objective. Later on, the scope of this intervention was extended to conservation, management and development of existing forests and these additional activities made it REDD+. International funding support was arranged to provide incentives for such activities, particularly to enable the concerned stakeholders to take preparatory steps to this effect. Once the deforestation is stopped and/or the forest conservation/ management/development activity gets itself established in a standard manner, the ‘owner’ of such forest is supposed to be eligible for selling the carbon-absorbing capacity of the forest in the carbon credit market. However, worldwide concerns against the mechanism of REDD+ pointed out several red facets of this scheme. On the technical ground, the definition of terms like ‘forest’ and ‘afforestation’ were hardly satisfying from ecological point of view. From socio-economic perspective the ownership was a debatable issue as it was understood that the resources 2 | P a g e of indigenous communities had been tactfully/forcefully taken over by the government, and the restrictions imposed in the name of forest conservation and management are likely to affect the livelihood of the forest-dependent communities. Making CFM a marketable commodity was another possible risk involved. The most fundamental issue was: why should the conservation efforts of our communities be sold for benefit of the environmental culprits of the developed countries? This is why the civil society debate on REDD and REDD+ continues even today.??? However, international governments did not pay much attention to such debates and agreed on promoting REDD+ with logic that the forest conserving communities will receive an additional financial gain from this scheme which would be encouraging for them. The Government of India launched five pilot projects across the country one of which happens to be in the Angul district of Odisha. This government project is implemented on a joint forest management (JFM) mode in which the government shares the stake with the communities in forest management and resource sharing though the REDD benefit is supposed to be for the protecting community only. Months before this government REDD project was launched, the community REDD project was launched in India as an outcome of the collaboration between Plan Vivo (PV) and Community Forestry International(CFI). CFI worked as a facilitator in helping the local communities in the pilot areas of India to set up the necessary standards at field level that would make them eligible for entry in the carbon credit market. This was called community REDD because it made some special endeavour to make the whole mechanism community-friendly claiming the community stake to be foremost. The community-friendly standards were determined by Plan Vivo which maintained a lot of flexibility for community-level compliances. RCDC as a CFI partner: RCDC’s long standing contribution in the field of CFM made the Regional Representative of CFI interested in approaching the former for a consideration of the pilot project on community REDD. RCDC has an understanding that with changing times and generations the CFM dynamics requires some new mechanism so as to sustain the effort. This was particularly in context of the newer generation focusing more on urban livelihood and losing interest in village resources. As CFI assured that the community-REDD project would be a community friendly mechanism that could help sustain the CFM activity with several advantages, RCDC decided to experiment with it in one of its intervention areas: the 3 | P a g e Balangir district. It is very much noteworthy here that PV insisted on Payment for Ecosystem Services(PES) to the communities, and saw REDD+ as one of the potential options for PES. That is to say, PV and CFI claimed to actually promote PES and not exactly REDD. While RCDC has been against commoditisation and commercialization of ecosystem services, particularly when corporate agencies and/or the government make attempts to this effect with vested interest. Rural communities have been known in some cases to have adopted PES within their own limitations and local feasibility, such as charging a nominal fee on timber and bamboo collected from the forests under their protection; and this not only helps them in village development but also discourages the lackadaisical attitude in accessing forest products that could have prevailed under free pass. That way a global linkage on PES doesn’t sound like an anti-community initiative. But when there is an apprehension of the innocence of the communities being taken advantage of for corporate purposes or any other purpose that the communities themselves would not have liked on moral grounds atleast, and/or with the business approach taking over the traditional community sense of fraternity leading to a damage of the societal values in community resource management, all system includes PES that have such risks come under our scrutiny. RCDC therefore remained cautious in attempting this experiment. The project period was initially for six months(January-June 2012), but understanding the difficulty in implementing it so quickly it was later extended later to December 2012 without any additional financial provision. The project area: The pilot project area selected for the community-REDD preparatory activities was in the Saintala Forest Range of Balangir district where a cluster of 33 villages was taken covering Community initiatives successfully regenerated and Forest degradation is rampant in many areas of the conserved forests in some parts of the district. district. Photo from Dumdumi. Photo from Katapalli. 4 | P a g e a forest area of about 10000 hectares. Some of these villages were pure CFM communities having no affiliation to the Forest Department, some were JFM villages, and some were JFM in pen & paper but CFM in practice. However, not all of the forests protecting committees were active. Some committees were quite established in community forest management while some were almost defunct or inactive. The forest is basically of peninsular Sal type, but mixed Sal forest is also found. The forest area was more or less good in condition. The social groups were heterogeneous in nature, tribals and non-tribals shared the habitat. Project interventions: As a part of the project intervention strategy, RCDC organized a state-level multi- stakeholders’ workshop on community forestry and REDD+, at Bhubaneswar on 30th June 2012 which brought in representatives of various important stakeholder groups on a common platform so as to discuss REDD+. RCDC expected that the inputs received through this consultation would be useful in making the intervention strategy more proper and effective. The event however resulted in the realization that there was a communication gap between the various stakeholders groups, and that there was a critical need of sincere sharing of relevant information with each other, more particularly for the communities. The project approach was essentially participatory. When it was observed that although the forest area was more or less in good condition, there was some localised degradation; the participatory assessment led to the identification of the following drivers of deforestation: Urban pressure(from the Saintala township and adjoining areas) Unsustainable harvesting Nexus between smugglers and some Forest Department (FD) staff. This degradation and deforestation activity was to be stopped while the existing resources were to be managed and developed properly. As such the following mitigation measures were decided: Strengthening community governance initiatives of natural resources Skill building of forest dwelling communities on sustainable harvesting and other scientific